SongLever In The Huntsville Times

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – You know the faces of winners you see on awards shows? The ones who can’t believe they really won?

They have nothing on Sophie McRoy. She turned beat red and clapped her hand over her wide-open mouth when she heard the first syncopated riffs of “Planet Shoe,” the song she had written with Anna Grace Keel and Abby Gipson.

“Let’s clap for those writers,” said Monroe Jones, as the crowd in the music room at Whitesburg Christian Academy screamed and applauded for the budding songwriters. “If there isn’t a shoe store called Planet Shoe, there should be, and this can be the song they play in their ad.”

“Planet Shoe” was just the first of the musical creations by the third-graders at Whitesburg Christian that Jones played last week. He was making his third trip to the school as part of the song-writing project he offers to school children.